Packs

If each vehicle is to carry 32 10-volt battery packs, how about the disposal of lead acid in the batteries? That's 32 gallons of it per vehicle to be discarded each year. If California's 20 million vehicles produced 640 million gallons of non-recyclable waste annually, would it be poured into the ocean or allowed to sink into the soil? RON OEHLKERS Venice Marla Cone responds: Lead acid in batteries is recycled, so there should be no significant disposal problem.

An Arab merchant from Nazareth plans to revive the ancient tobacco caravan route through the Middle East by importing 1 million packs of Egyptian cigarettes to Israel. Elus Shalloufe, 35, a Christian Arab importer, maneuvered his way through the intricacies of Egyptian and Israeli bureaucracy to sign an unprecedented business deal to bring "Cleopatra" cigarettes from Egypt to his hometown.

Re Steve Hochman's May 25 article, "County Bars Rock Concerts at Ford Theatre," which speaks of the conflict between rock at the John Anson Ford Theatre and events at the nearby Hollywood Bowl: Rich against poor, old against new, mainstream vs. underground, upper-middle-aged couples with wine and bread and cheese in picnic baskets vs. youngsters with beer in 12-packs. Why should it be a battle? I guess because it always has been. The winner is the loser in the end. We are all entitled to the same rights.

They are the elusive foot soldiers of the Mexican drug cartels. They lug heavy, tightly packed bales of marijuana under cover of darkness across miles of terrain so rugged that the Border Patrol has to stalk them by footprint. It is, as one agent put it, "the ultimate hunt." Another chapter in the drama chronicled in Tuesday's Times unfolded after midnight recently in southwestern New Mexico. The area has become a busy corridor for smugglers as other parts of the border have tightened up.

I am an ex-cigarette smoker who is thrilled with President Clinton's efforts to protect teenagers from cigarette addiction (Aug. 24). Although neither of my parents smoked, I started smoking at 14, using the free giveaway pack saved from an airline trip. In college, I smoked 2 1/2 packs a day. By my junior year, I became concerned about chronic sore throats and decided to quit. Not easy, but I did. That was 31 years ago. For well more than 10 years I had a repeating dream (I think I still have it occasionally)

This second effort from the besuited British quintet best-known for the roiling, boiling single "Birth, School, Work, Death" (1988) is as bedrock-solid as it is ultimately unspectacular. Not a bum track in the bunch, but aside from "Walking, Talking Johnny Cash Blues"--a definite cult clas sick --and the current single "She Gives Me Love"--which pretty much packs everything these wise guys know into one lashing, slashing hunk of pop aggression--there's naught that memorable either.

A U.S. Army veteran whose amphibious tank was sunk by a German mine off a Normandy beach on D-Day on Friday recovered his personal belongings almost intact 41 years later. John Glass, a corporal in the 58th Armored Field Artillery Batallion at the time, returned to France at his own expense to collect his boots, shaving soap, personal mail and packs of cigarettes. The tank, lying 180 feet deep in the English Channel, was sealed airtight and everything aboard was kept intact.

Matthias Düwel packs loads of visual information into “Eden,” his L.A. solo debut at Martha Otero, which is itself packed with 24 oils, watercolors and drawings. Despite the sinuous ribbons of bright color writhing around in Düwel's modestly scaled paintings, none feels crowded. The same goes for his works on paper. In black-and-white or super-saturated color, they, too, leave viewers plenty of room to maneuver, sometimes swooping smoothly through open spaces and at others zipping every which way with stop-and-start suddenness, like a fly navigating a picnic.

Jim Leyland, who recently resigned as Florida Marlin manager, is a heavy smoker, and this worries Mike Littwin of Rocky Mountain News: "If the Rockies persuade free-agent manager Leyland to replace Don Baylor--and they're already taking bids from moving companies--they are prepared to issue another statement; that it is possible to manage successfully at Coors Field, although you might need two or three packs of smokes a game to get it done. "Personally, I fear for Leyland's health.